Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://kodfabrik.com/journal/why-am-i-shutting-down-kozmos <comment><USER4> I definitely feel for the author - the Chrome Extension team has been growing increasingly developer-hostile recently. My own open-source extension HabitLab ( [https://habitlab.stanford.edu/](https://habitlab.stanford.edu/) ) that I've been maintaining for the past 3 years is going to be removed in 2 days (got a 14-day removal notice for permissions even though all permissions it requests are used and needed, and every update I try to submit is rejected by their system after about 3-4 days) and I feel utterly helpless. It's only used by about 12,000 users so unlike PushBullet I probably don't have the visibility to get a human to intervene, so will be going the way of Kozmos most likely.

<comment><USER5> Dealing with Google these days seems a lot like dealing with an authoritarian government. To operate safely on Google's platforms, you need a friend who works at Google who can vouch for you as their over-eager police keep trying to put you in jail.

<comment><USER6> And its one of the reasons people should stop using google products, or it will get worse.

I am 99% on DuckDuckGo and other search engines, Firefox (which is great), Lots of mail providers these days which excel on every front, lots devtools that don't need any Google infrastructure,

I really hope one of these days we get a message from Google (btw Google is really the most faceless organization out there, I really need to think hard to give you any names) that they will change their tune, but until that time, its best to leave.

<comment><USER7> Yup, DuckDuckGo's been my default browser search engine for quite some time now. I'm quite happy with the results. I'm reaching out to google.com less and less every day.

The last straw will be abandoning Gmail :)

<comment><USER8> I don't if this will help you make that decision, but Fastmail's alias system is a godsend for me when it comes to filtering incoming emails and protecting myself from spam.

With every account you get a finite number of aliases you can create, but in practice that number is high enough that I just use a new alias for every site I visit.

Unlike in Gmail, these aliases don't contain any references to your original address. So if you're signing up for a dogwalking service, you can create an alias for `firstname.lastname@example.com`, and then if you start getting spam to that address, you know where it came from, you know that there's no chance your real address will be reverse-engineered from your alias, and you can auto-reject or sort everything to that address into a separate folder without affecting any of your other emails.

I have separate email aliases I distribute to friends and family members so that if I ever run into a doxing situation or for some reason need to go nuclear on my email, I can turn everything off except for them. I also have my email linked to my own domain of course, but when I sign up for most commercial services, I use @fastmail.com aliases. That way I know that there's no way for those services to track me across accounts/websites via my personal domain name.

And everything gets organized in the same inbox, same account. I consider it to be a killer feature.

<comment><USER9> I don't want to spoil any joy of yours but this is in my experience pretty standard with most email providers.

With some you can do the + trick (which gmail probably still does) but i just have my domain as catchall and it works pretty great with blacklisting.

<comment><USER8> The reason Fastmail's feature matters is specifically because it's not using the + trick or a catch-all domain. They're 'real' aliases, not just Regex filters or wildcards.

If you're using the + trick, you haven't gained any privacy, because I can strip the + and get your original address.

If you're using a catch-all domain, you haven't gained any privacy, because the domain remains a unique identifier for your all of your accounts. It's good for organizing, but not for privacy, because you're still publicly attaching your identity to every email you send.

With fastmail, I don't need to do email@example.com or email@example.com. I can just do firstname.lastname@example.com. That's a really large privacy win, since it gets rid of one of the biggest and least regulated unique identifiers that services can share with each other.

I don't know if other providers like Outlook are also offering 'real' aliases. I'm happy if they are, I think this should be an industry standard feature. Either way, switching to any provider does will be a pretty significant feature upgrade over Gmail, even if you're currently using a paid Gmail account with your own domain.

<comment><USER9> I see so the only difference is that they provide 600 aliases on their domain compared to lets say 25 of other providers. I wonder how they deal with poluted namespace.

So It so different from random domain catchall?

The reason why i would be worried about Fastmail is that they have are Australian company with servers in US. Both of those mean that Law enforcement can simply ask for users emails.

Now i am for sure not target of Law enforcement or goverment so i dont care but i am not sure why i wouldnt use service thats in better juristiction and is privacy focused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I get it, Google loves to automate stuff to save money. Makes sense, I agree. But I'm seriously wondering if all the people in charge of automating such processes are those delusional ego-programmers who think they can solve anything with machine learning, aka "AI". Really, I cannot understand that there aren't basic safeguards in place like "hey this extension got repeatedly flagged and when a human finally reviewed it we found it was a mistake each time, so maybe set a flag on this extension to double-check next time". Or maybe, have such incidents automatically bubble up to the team responsible for the automatic screening. But why do that if you're a wunderkind programmer who never makes mistakes?

Sorry, this is the only explanation I have for this, I've worked with this kind of person twice. Once they got the first version of something running they are done, no further testing, no sanity checks, no asserts or logger.warn() for "this can never happen" branches.

<comment><USER11> The other explanation is that they don't really want users to have most browser extensions. The browser extensions either become features that google wants to embed in the browser, or things they don't want, for business reasons. In either case it is better if the extension dies after a year or so.

BTW, this doesn't have to be a conscious choice of anyone at Google, it could just be the way the incentives turn out.

<comment><USER12> A bookmarking service sounded to me like something Google wanted to operate themselves, and I was thinking maybe that was related to why it got taken down.

At the same time, it seemed to not have had that many users yet, so, a bit early for Google to pay attention?

<comment><USER13> Google already has a bookmarking service at [https://www.google.com/bookmarks/](https://www.google.com/bookmarks/)

I have stuff saved in there dating from 2007 to 2015. Used to use a Firefox extension to load them in the sidebar.

<comment><USER14> I was surprised to see that is not the same bookmarks synced in my Chrome Browser. That's the case with [https://passwords.google.com/](https://passwords.google.com/) . Is their a webview of synced Chrome bookmarks (I couldn't find one) and what use case is google.com/bookmarks?

<comment><USER15> Oh that is trippy, not only does the link from the GP not include my Chrome sync'd bookmarks, all the recent activity on it is places I've starred in Google Maps (!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I maintain a paid Chrome extension ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shortkeys- custom-k...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shortkeys-custom- keyboard/logpjaacgmcbpdkdchjiaagddngobkck)) and I've had a very similar experience with the frustrating repeat automated shutdown emails, except that so far my extension hasn't been actually shut down. I'm just waiting for the day that it happens at this point. I'm surprised it has not happened before now, since my extension requires a lot of permissions to do its job.

In my case, I make a nice little side income from that extension so it would be a noticeable income hit. But I'm not sure of anything I can really do to prevent it from being shut down if and when Google's robots decide the time has come.

<comment><USER17> An interesting extension but I am a bit surprised - it seems the target users are developers, which generally have the wherewithal to download the repo and install themselves - how does this result in a "noticeable income"?

Sorry, not trying to be obtuse, just curious from a side-income perspective.

<comment><USER16> It surprised me too. I started charging a few months ago after it was free for ~7 years. Now I'm making $600 a month off of it.

Paying users seem to be part productivity nerds who maybe aren't technical enough to grok installing from the repo, and part people who just choose to pay for the automatic upgrades or to support the developer. Also, lots of users are web gamers who use it for in-game automation.

I wrote a post about it 1 week after monetizing, if you're curious: [https://critter.blog/2020/01/14/week-1-of-monetizing-my- chro...](https://critter.blog/2020/01/14/week-1-of-monetizing-my-chrome- extension/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Google (Robot): We'll take your extension down

Me: Hey, this must be a mistake

> Google (Robot): No mistake, review these policies, your extension violates > one of them

Me: It does not violate any of them, this is a mistake!

> Google (Finally human): Oh, sorry, a mistake.

Obviously someone just needs to create a robot that automatically replies to the takedown notices and disputes them, thus closing the loop!

<comment><USER19> Somehow I expect that using a bot against their bot violates user TOS part #63836370 section YQ, and they will immediately lock your accounts, associated business accounts, delete the data and offer zero recourse.

<comment><USER20> And laugh about it, because they think it's funny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have a side-project that is partially a browser extension. I use a single codebase for both Firefox and Chrome.

Even with my trivial side-project and a grand total of two releases so far, Google ar itrarily rejected one release for being "spammy" when there was literally a 5 line diff between it and the previous release. Thankfully just finding the depreciated dashboard and uploading an icon (the "new dashboard" doesn't have this feature yet apparently) got it through after resubmitting it.

It feels like they've set themselves as gatekeepers of Chrome extensions (Windows users can only install from the "store") but they aren't actually interested in doing the job even though you pay an admin fee for the privilege of developing a free extension for their browser.

<comment><USER22> Your best course of action is to drop chrome support, and make your extension as good as possible and make a point of marketing that it's firefox only. Most won't do it due to worrying about market share, but alas IMO it's the best option available

<comment><USER21> I use Firefox personally and originally made the thing for myself. I added Chrome support because Chrome is much more popular (not far from ten times more popular these days :() and people I would like to use this, eg friends and family, mostly use Chrome.

I couldn't ask them to switch browsers for my little side project. I have to co-operate with Google's bureaucracy. For what it's worth, so far it seems like Mozilla is not exactly streets ahead, but at least they didn't charge me and they seem to be fairer and more helpful to extension developers (they have a "self-distribution" mode with relaxed oversight I used while in private alpha, and their tools and docs are better).

<comment><USER23> I think it would be perfectly reasonable to promote Firefox to your friends and family as "simply the better choice" irrespective of your own interests.

When Chrome was better, I suggested friends and family use Chrome. Now I think most people would benefit from using Firefox as their primary driver.

<comment><USER24> Are you including the change cost here, which will be many times higher for most of the population vs. HN? Even if I thought that Firefox was a better choice, I'd recommend to my friends and family to keep using whatever they are using unless they have to switch for some reason.

<comment><USER25> What, precisely, is the cost?

<comment><USER26> Lazy web devs that only test in Chrome and maybe safari that constantly break things in other browsers. I don't mind sending the angry support email and using chrome for a single task here and there but others might.

<comment><USER27> I never used Chrome and never encountered a website that didn't work on Firefox. I think this concern is a bit overblown.

<comment><USER26> Bank of America didn't work for the better part of last year. Chase Rewards are currently broken since last week. Its easy to drop small sites that don't test but my experience has been they actually bother testing and it's the major sites that actually have problems.

<comment><USER28> I've had Firefox fail to work properly on the sites of Slashdot, Amazon, Newegg, Chase, BoA, GE, Walmart, the IRS, PennDOT, Mozilla's own org site, WaPo, NPR, Fox, Disney, and a whole host of others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The worst outcome of the iPhone is the general move of programmers from people who write software for a platform the user fully controls to people who write software for a platform controlled by a company that the user borrows a device from.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, everyone's known that platform dependence is risky, and every decade or so we "learn our lesson" but then forget the moment the next cool platform comes along if it has enough users.

<comment><USER31> its not so much forgotten as aggressively dismissed and mocked as tin foil hattery.

<comment><USER32> It's almost like the companies with more money than governments and complete control over what content users see might shape the world to keep their profits high.

One way to tell if a conspiracy is crazy is if it doesn't benefit rich people. This pretty clearly passes that test.

<comment><USER31> You don't have to believe conspiracy theories to think centralization is bad. Sometimes bullshit "they" don't want you to know about is still bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Maybe they're still angry with him about leftpad.</joke>

Yes, it really is the same guy: [https://kodfabrik.com/journal/i-ve-just- liberated-my-modules](https://kodfabrik.com/journal/i-ve-just-liberated-my- modules). And, joking aside it would be wise to bear in mind that we're reading only one side of the story here. As with leftpad, there's another side to this.

With leftpad he told Kik, "fuck you" ([https://medium.com/@mproberts/a-discussion-about-the- breakin...](https://medium.com/@mproberts/a-discussion-about-the-breaking-of- the-internet-3d4d2a83aa4d#.ld8o5zqz7)), and then wrought global havoc on npm users. Now he's claiming the Chrome Extension Team "continuously troll developers", and is pulling down something he's created... again.

I only have two data points, so the behaviour here is a coincidence rather than a pattern, but I will guarantee you whatever you think of Google there is more to this than meets the eye.

I'm not without sympathy for the author, but neither am I about to uncritically take his side.

<comment><AUTHOR> > With leftpad he told Kik, "fuck you"

In response to a threat starting with "We don't mean to be a dick about it" and ending with "our trademark lawyers are going to be banging on your door and taking down your accounts and stuff like that", I did say "fuck you" to Kik.

If that makes me the character in your mind, enjoy your imagination.

<comment><USER34> It seems that lots of people are missing that part. The Kik guys were doing their corporate double-speak b/s about 'let's find a solution' when the only solution is handing over the name. All while threatening with door-banging lawyers.

And he did offer them a solution: $30,000 dollars, to which they promptly - albeit indirectly - replied with _fuck you_.

<comment><USER35> The guy made a very valid point:

We must pursue our trademarks or risk losing them. We must. So can we make this amicable instead of hostile?

The maintainer could have requested things like "Okay can I make some blog posts and you help me with some SEO to make sure people are aware of the changes to my project name?" etc. Sounds like Kik was willing to be reasonable and help where they could. Clearly they could have gone in with an opening statement saying "this is the lawyer, I am sending trademark takedown notices, fuck you, go to hell" but they clearly did not.

This is one person trying to make the best of an awkward situation, and one person just saying "duces".

<comment><USER34> "We must" is nonsense on the part of Kik. That's part of the corporate b/s where people make it seem like things are "out of our hands."

If he was releasing a messenger app called KikAss, then sure, they "must" enforce the Kik trademark.

But if I release a brand of shoes called Kik, with an api that allows users to poll how many steps a user has taken that day, that's not a trademark violation.

Trademark violations require intent to mislead, or they could be unintentionally confusing (for example, if Kik has been talking about releasing shoes for a while or if it's a well known brand of soccer balls).

Neither of these things have occurred, so the trademark doesn't have to go through a (futile) enforcement process.

<comment><USER36> > Trademark violations require intent to mislead

No, they don't, only probability of customer confusion.

Criminal counterfeiting charges require intent, IIRC.

<comment><USER34> If you see the second half of that sentence, with an example of how...

> or they could be unintentionally confusing [to the customer]

<comment><USER37> We see the second half. Your sentence reduces to:

> Trademark violations require intent to mislead, or they do not require > intent to mislead.

You are trying to assert that this makes sense and that the second half makes the first half correct. Neither is true.

<comment><USER34> I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve by leaving multiple successive comments threads about the same topic. I will reply to this message and will withdraw after this.

——

The sentence reduces to "trademark violations are considered to have taken place regardless of when there is either an intention to mislead or if a customer was unintentionally misled."

If the grammar was poop and you can't make a good faith reading of it (to go so far as to follow me around on this post) then by all means feel free to comment away but I won't be responding to it.

<comment><USER37> Another expression of your stereotype: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23360585](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23360585)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Is it possible that Google writes code to automate the moderation (for lack of better word) of the extensions in the Chrome Store because they are trying to avoid paying hundreds of people to do it manually? I know it's easy to say "Google doesn't care about you," and generally it as a company may not care, but they also are not in the business of putting us out of business.

It feels like to me that they have just become a sprawling mass of interconnected yet disjointed divisions but without any real customer service department that can handle the amount of requests or situations like in OP. I am not on their side in any way, but Occam's razor and all, it just seems the most likely explanation to me is that they are just too cheap to pay people to handle the volume of customer issues they have? Or would it not be economically feasible? What do y'all think?

[Edited to divide into two paragraphs for slightly easier reading]

<comment><USER39> I can't see how a healthy browser extension ecosystem would help Google. Without Google getting any real value out of it, it makes total sense they do a poor job managing it.

<comment><USER38> I somewhat agree, yet wouldn't a healthy extension ecosystem (excellent term, btw) attract more users to Chrome and in turn keep users more entwined in the larger Google ecosystem? I guess there is a cost/benefit analysis done. They put just enough effort into it to get the return or results they want. The little guys like OP (who arguably make the best content because it's open source and not full of trackers or other junk) just get stepped on along the way.

<comment><USER39> I don't know at all, but if I had to guess extension usage is pretty low. I'm not sure the average user really sees browser extensions as something they need. They aren't as obvious as say mobile apps. On the flip side, extensions like Honey seem to suggest at least enough people use them to be of some worth.

<comment><USER28> Some of the more popular extensions have thirty+ million users, and this is for trivial fluff functionality. When you hit up the extensions dealing with adblocking or say, interacting with Instagram, they can hit 100+ million easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> As someone who's Google ad account was mysteriously suspended for no given reason (even before a single ad was run) and am now up to 4 days waiting with no reply nor phone number I can call, I hear you..

</comment><comment><USER41> It is disgusting that no one from media asks Sundar Pichai touch questions like:

1\. Non human (AI) usage for termination google accounts. 2\. No repeal process

At least some employee from Google here in hn must do things and understand mentality of other people.

It increasingly looks like - well... we employees live in bubble but if you are unlucky then you are screwed. Do not ask us?

What kind of programmers wrote such code that terminates account without human intervention? Please do not blame it on Project Managers.

You are human - so is some one that was affected by your code.

Amen

<comment><USER42> I just created a Google Voice account for the first time. A few hours later I asked 3 different friends to send me a text message to see if it worked. I didn't get any of them or any warning that it takes time for the number to activate.

I tried again the next day, same results. That was 4-5 days ago, and still nothing. I'm abandoning Google Voice because I assume Google has abandoned it. It's not like there's anyone I can ask.

This is just an inconvenience to me. I can't imagine what it's like to have a service I actually rely on and then lose it.

<comment><USER43> Gaslighting is the worst.

It's getting more common, too. Just the other day I found out that posting links in a youtube comment makes the comment invisible to everyone else. In hindsight, disallowing links is almost certainly a good policy and it's easy to understand and appreciate why it was put in place, but why the gaslighting? Just pop up a box explaining that links aren't allowed. The gaslighting isn't going to fool spammers for long enough to be a meaningful deterrent, but it _is_ going to trip up legitimate users enough to meaningfully degrade their experience.

Time to visit my bitwarden and port another account off gmail (my late new- years resolution is to port an account off gmail every time I get myself worked up about something google did -- funnel the useless frustration into something worthwhile.)

<comment><USER44> I think the term is shadow banning

<comment><USER45> They invented the term shadow banning because "gas lighting" has very negative connotations.

Shadow banning is 100% a form of gas lighting, and IMO should be considered just as unethical. If you are going to ban someone, words, or actions be upfront and clear about the rules and bans

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> It seems like trying to build a business on any Google property is simply a bad idea. Or, if you do, have an alternative ready for when Google shuts down the product or cancels your account.

<comment><USER47> My "RL" business, that has nothing to do with tech, relies heavily on Google ads, whenever we lessen the spending on them, our income drop proportionally, I am very worried about what will happen when they yank our account due to a mistake, but I am yet to figure out an alternative, other ad providers made no difference...

<comment><USER48> I made such a mistake - hosted a static page on AWS S3 with a redirect. Google didn't like that. AdWords account blocked, no one to talk to but the bots!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Do you remember when browser extensions could be installed from a developer's own website and didn't require any kind of dysfunctional 'gatekeeping'?

I know there are benefits to having someone vet browser extensions, but it seems a shame that they remove the self-distribution option completely when their moderation is so ineffectual.

<comment><USER50> Yes I do remember.

Then extensions started being a spyware / malware delivery mechanism, with popular ones being bought and turned overnight. Coupled with browser plugins shoved down on the user's throat by various Windows software, this made Firefox unusable, at least on Windows.

It's why back in 2010 I started recommending Chrome to family, because Chrome installations kept being clean. It's why we can't have nice things.

<comment><USER51> From malwarebytes: "Spyware. Although it sounds like a James Bond gadget, it's actually a type of malware that infects your PC or mobile device and gathers information about you, including the sites you visit, the things you download, your usernames and passwords, payment information, and the emails you send and receive."

Yep, Google is certainly protecting us from companies that do that.

<comment><USER52> Both Chrome webstore and Google play are infested with spyware, maladware and such. Yet it's not a problem when the big G is pimping them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> There are people inside Google that must have thought this review and communication process was a Good Idea. It wouldn't have gotten built otherwise.

Will these individuals continue to be putting Good Ideas into production indefinitely or is there some sort of immune response inside Google?

I have no interest in a scape goat or anything like that, I'm just curious if there's a way to incorporate the real-world consequences of choices like this into who is empowered to make choices going forward.

<comment><USER54> One thing I've noticed working for a variety of companies is that highly profitable companies generally do _not_ have consequences for even fairly dramatic failures, both in terms of how they treat customers and how they treat employees. They simply have too much money, so there's little need to do so.

In a tiny company, a large failure can easily be the end of the company, so they're far more motivated to care about things like customer happiness, etc.

<comment><USER55> Relevant: [https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/23/gap/](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/23/gap/)

This story is about infra, but it applies just as much for product.

<comment><USER54> Interesting read. I've never worked for a company that tried to do a reasonably serious post mortem on a disaster. Or perhaps I was simply never one of the cool kids that were invited.

It's pleasant to think that that's actually happening somewhere. Usually it's probably more like Google+ ( _gosh, we did everything right, but somehow it just didn 't work out--oh well, it wasn't that much money after all, and hey, we can keep using it internally_).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I see these stories from time to time, and I can't help but wonder if there's an opportunity for some kind of third-party support for Google.

Like, if you were a former Googler or someone who'd been through their customer-support wringer, and you had some contacts, you could set yourself up as a consultant for small-scale Google account holders who run into this. Charge a fee for access to your higher-tier contacts, maybe even sell "Google insurance", a group of small devs could pool some money to pay for access to Google support when the hammer randomly falls on one of them.

This idea brought to you by my experience with various government bureaucracies, which are nominally publicly accessible, but, due to under- staffing and high demand for services, are more productively approached through the right kind of lawyer.

<comment><USER57> > _Charge a fee for access to your higher-tier contacts, maybe even sell > "Google insurance"_

There are organisations that already work like this in many countries of the world. That's usually what we want to get away from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Old and busted: Google unexpectedly cancelling their products.

New hotness: Google unexpectedly cancelling _other peoples '_ products.

<comment><USER58> Google must be an awesome place to work as an engineer because apparently you just generally don't have to worry about deprecating your products/services or interacting with your customers. Amazon is notorious for their oncall and stubbornness when it comes to sunsetting services. Everyone I know that works there hates the burden that comes with being "customer obsessed." I never hear any complaints like that from the people I know at Google.

<comment><USER59> Amazon is good _if you are the customer_. If you are a vendor, you're as fucked as if you'd use Paypal, the horror stories about automated systems booting people off of Amazon with no way to reach a human that can override the decision are rampant.

<comment><USER60> Amazon is good if you are the customer, right up until they use the data they collected from your product to launch their own competing service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I feel you...

We had similar issues with the Google Play store for the ArtStation App ([https://magazine.artstation.com/2018/12/happened- artstation-...](https://magazine.artstation.com/2018/12/happened-artstation- android-app/)), it simply got taken down and appealing continually got rejected. It was only after the issue got picked up as the top story on Hacker News and other sites that exposed the dysfunctional nature of their moderation that finally Google subtly changed their policy so that if the content is primarily "artistic" it's allowed, but the catch is that only they deem what is appropriate and not...

We recently updated our Chrome extension also and it just seems to me that not a whole lot of effort is going into the Chrome Web Store, at least on the developer side where you update the extensions.

<comment><USER62> Oh I knew Apple applied the prude-policy to their store. I did not realize Google did too. Interesting.

<comment><USER63> Yet for some reason does not flag the Reddit, Instagram, and Twitch app with similar or worse content. I wonder if their algorithm has special exceptions built in to ignore apps specifically by name or by "downloads > X".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Wish I had known about this product. This seems like a really awesome bookmarking service -- better than most I've seen. :(

This is also so terribly common. I had a Twitter account get suspended for 2 months...with no explanation. I appealed it but it still took 2 months. What if that had been my main source of revenue? They restored the account without much explanation.

We really need _real_ people to make decisions like this. Oh it's not scaleable? Then maybe it's not a product you can sustain.

<comment><USER65> > What if that had been my main source of revenue?

I'm not saying that people who did are in the wrong, but yeah, don't do that. Likewise, it is very risky to have Youtube as a unique source of revenue, etc. Or even to diversify but across the same platform company/holding...

You should not take such critical dependencies _even_ if they had real people doing proper reviews, because they can very well change their terms when they want, in unpredictable ways.

<comment><USER64> Oh, I agree! There are so many YT creators now that discuss how their videos are demonetized and how it's fucking them over but they're okay because of Patreon support.

Same with me. If I lost my Twitter account, I could rebuild it -- my _actual_ following at the time had more to do with my blog and RSS (miss those days :( ); however, it shows that you can't really trust that an account is yours or that as long as you follow rules, you get to keep using the site. Or that you'll get a "fair trial" when you're accused of breaking rules.

It doesn't help that these companies also punish you for getting accused when they _do_ have manual review. One of my photos on FB got mistakenly flagged, reviewed and approved that it's fine, and I still had a 7-day ban from posting/commenting. Youtube has that 3 strikes rule or whatever where if you get accused 3 times or more of copyright infringement (even if false and retracted), you lose monetization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Hi Azer! It's been a while.

I had the same problem with a Chrome extension for my side project Defero (school information system). It uses InboxSDK to integrate the Defero address book with GMail. Unfortunately, it got flagged for security review and it kept getting rejected no matter what I changed. I ended up concluding my authentication mechanism and/or my use of InboxSDK was causing problems so I'm going to try changing the authentication mechanism.

But working with the Google to try to get it fixed and finding the cryptic warnings they hide in various parts of the developer console has been extremely annoying. I don't blame you for your decision.

</comment><comment><USER67> I have to wonder how PayPal are feeling about their $4 billion acquisition of Honey now, which requests permission to read/write on all websites and exists solely as a browser extension. They're on multiple browsers, but I doubt either Mozilla or Apple will be particularly interested to protect what's presumably now a massive PayPal data mining operation.

<comment><USER68> I would think lawyers at PayPal would have a little more 'pull' than a single developer though.

<comment><USER45> I doubt it would have to go to the lawyers, I am sure the exec's of both companies are members of the same organizations, country clubs, or other social circles

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> It's a shame that so many of the comments have to do with left-pad. Kozmos was a great piece of software and I will miss it even though I haven't used it in a while. It came very close to how I personally think a bookmarking service should work, which is pretty incredible for something made by a single person. Seems like a lot of people have been complaining about the Chrome extension store lately. I wonder what's going on behind the scenes there. Anyway, looking forward to your next project Azer.

<comment><USER70> I would really benefit from this product. I'm working across three computers and I have book marks all over the place. A central repository that enhances searching and categorization would be awsome.

<comment><USER69> Yea, I actually offered to take over development of Kozmos, but wasn't taken up on the offer. I'm going to build my own solution one day, just because I am so interested in it, but until then I use Raindrop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I imagine it must be painful to tie your agency to a large corporate entity that clearly doesn't give a shit about you.

<comment> m-p-3 All hail our indifferent corporate overlords.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I had a small harmless extension which does not access ANY user information and completely client-side. I received cryptic takedown notice and was not able to convince them it is not in violation of their policies. They never specify what policy exactly you violate, just keep referring to the whole document. Finally I decided it is not worth it and took down my extension.

</comment><comment><USER73> I'm sorry that you had that experience. Maybe enough up votes will get Google's attention.

<comment><USER74> There's only one developer advocate on the Chrome extension team; hopefully they see this!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23198629](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23198629)

<comment><USER75> Instead of coming on here and addressing the issue, he tweeted this instead:

Thanks for the tag. Looks like the author's core issue is (understandably) with the construction of the system itself. I'm not sure what I can do here other than listen and reiterate that we are trying to work to address these issues.

\- [https://twitter.com/DotProto/status/1264331488029376513](https://twitter.com/DotProto/status/1264331488029376513)

A month ago he said:

For context, we're currently planning to create a team that will respond to escalations with more meaningful information about a rejection.

\- [https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/chromium- exte...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/chromium- extensions/o3I5pFH5z_g/FnvY0pI3AwAJ)

But the situation only appears to be getting worse and no one at Google appears to care enough to do anything about it.

I have an extension that is once again in rejection form mail purgatory and it makes me want to take my extensions off of the Google Chrome Web Store as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I wonder if anyone is keeping track of just how many developers are completely writing off Google just because their support is so terrible, and their policies so absurdly draconian.

People give shit to Jeff Bezos all the time, but compared to Google, there is no comparison to the level of company-wide user hostility and blatant privacy violations with such little public accountability, as that of Google's.

</comment><comment><USER17> Scrolling through the comments, many seem to think this was unintentional, mistake, or overzealous AI. However, the author said this has been ongoing for 2years:

> "Google's Chrome Extension team has been giving me a complete nightmare > since last two years."

What if the extension violated some policy that he either overlooked or is not publicly stated?

<comment><USER77> Generally if you take the approach "what might I be doing wrong?" instead of aggressively asserting "I am doing nothing wrong!", you're able to uncover some solution on your side. I rarely ever try to deal with support because it often ends in no/poor resolutions.

I would guess there's something in this extension that looks very similar to suspicious activity (regardless of whether it is) and some light refactoring would resolve the issue of repeated flagging.

Not suggesting this is right or good, but it's probably less time consuming and more effective than emailing back and forth for two years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> I keep seeing these things pop up on here and I am starting to get the sense that the Chrome team at Google feels it is too big to fail. They don't seem to care about fixing their system, but once developers leave to your competitor you're in trouble. Just look at Windows Phone, pretty solid OS had some nice features that Android and iOS didn't but at the end of the day no developers really wanted to make apps for it so it died a slow death.

With the new Edge supporting Chrome Extensions, I wonder if some of these devs are going to move their extensions over to that or do like Kosmos and just move on to some other project that is outside the reach of Google.

All in all it is sad to see Kosmos go, I used it back in 2017 and really liked it. I didn't make the jump to the paid version but it was a well put together extension and solved a problem I think many users have.

</comment><comment><USER79> Eventually, somebody will write bots to deal with this robotic bureaucracy and it will be matter of how much licenses and CPU power you have to negotiate a better deal. Essentially, it will be like rich people nowadays solve issues between themselves using lawers.

</comment><comment><USER80> This story explain perfectly why I will never create anything relying on Google tech or services again... Too many horrors story... And I have 2 projects killed by their dumb AI and without any possibility to talk to a human Google is Skynet!

</comment><comment><USER81> I'm keeping an eye on cookiengineer's "Stealth" proxy ( [https://github.com/cookiengineer/stealth](https://github.com/cookiengineer/stealth) ). It reminds me of the old (and still kickin') Proxomitron ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxomitron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxomitron) )

If you MITM your own browser you can do whatever you want without an extension (that's almost a hostage to browser makers.)

</comment><comment><USER82> Another victim of the Chrome Extension AI. Seems like the PR move of last week was nothing beyond that, a PR move. I expect them to backpedal again like they did with Pushbullet, but it's too late now.

<comment><USER83> But thousands other will perish

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> <rant>

I feel Google, Facebook and Twitter need to take a big step back and stop antagonizing paying users: be it developers or advertisers. A majority of the issues stem from horribly strict enforcement of policies. What these sites expect from us mere mortals is to do a tightrope walk every time we create and launch something. And some of these policies are actually ridiculous. I understand the fallout of Cambridge Analytica has caused all these sites to give more importance to policy enforcement but the solution to that problem does not lie in automating it through use of technology alone. Business and people's livelihood depend on these policy enforcement. God forbid your business Ad account is shutdown for good because you used a word that causes some stupid algorithm somewhere trigger an automatic ban.

It has happened to me. And worst part is you have no recourse. I have spoken directly with Google Execs who were assigned to a client of mine for managing a big ad account. Even they were clueless as to why the system suspended the account. After a lot of digging around I realized that it was because I had used the same credit card in two different accounts. I mean really? Come on! I am lucky I had a Google Exec who was in contact with me because the client was high value. What would small businesses be going through if the same thing happened to them? I shudder to think.

All these sites need to relax with their enforcement of policies. Deploy humans for this. We already have a lot of unemployment due to this pandemic and this would be a great time to payback some of those profits by employing more support staff. AI is good but it is not good enough yet to have such levels of control.

</rant>

<comment><USER85> Humans require salaries and Google is a giant machine for turning attention/intent into money. Adding humans into the loop just creates friction for the money printing part. And as you noted, they care when the person spending money is rich enough. It's everyone else that loses with their system.

I've been reading these stories for as long as I can remember knowing about HN. People don't seem to quite learn that Google is a machine for printing money and unless you're paying them they don't care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> I don't understand how we've normalized Googles behavior to the point where this doesn't even shock me anymore. When I used Google Play Music a couple years ago there was a feature that was broken for YEARS according to the bug reports I could find, and in a classic Google move they shut the service down before ever fixing it.

That might sound like a non sequitur but it's ridiculous to me how little Google cares about anyone (users or the people who make content for their platforms) yet we still use their products. These days I try to avoid them wherever possible, not only for a small satisfaction of boycotting the company, but also because if I grow to like one of their products it will just shut down eventually.

What can we do about this?

<comment><USER87> > What can we do about this?

There is a much harsher solution that I'm not even sure I advocate yet: stigmatize employment there.

At-will employment somewhere when we can easily go elsewhere means that, while we don't necessarily condone all that our company does, we in general support/accept the company and its approach. Therefore, absent hardships, we must assume Google employees generally support Google actions as a whole (even if not this one). If others disapprove of Google's actions as a whole, they are allowed to disapprove of those that work there.

In my opinion, the best you can do is disapprove of working there (including passing opinionated judgment, albeit politely, on those that do work there). Maybe you take such character judgments in your personal or hiring decisions. Having said that, I don't agree with it as I generally support Google's actions/presence as a whole, but the further their average lowers, the more myself and others won't.

<comment><USER88> Some of the kindest people I know work at Google.

The truth is that it is become an enormous company and somebody working e.g. on the internals of Compose code has no power over how Chrome handles extensions.

I despise Google more and more as a company but that's not going to affect them.

In the areas where Google has some real alternatives, switch to these.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Why are google unable to offer ongoing services? Anything that requires management is always a disaster for them (DCMA notices on YouTube, hell any part of YouTube for creators, Nest, now this). I've worked at small trading companies where if you're not directly involved in the act of trading, you're just a cost centre to be minimised. Is it that?

</comment><comment><USER90> Someone should collect all those HN posts and send them on LinkedIn to all google employees as a PM, there must be someone important that will review this or forward it directly to a department? [https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?facetCurrent...](https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?facetCurrentCompany=%5B%221441%22%2C%22791962%22%2C%2216140%22%2C%2210440912%22%5D)

</comment><comment><USER91> I remember when the Free Software movement really started to make inroads into the corporate world, which in my circles was the late 90s / early 2000s.

It was like a revelation.

No longer were we tied to inflexible, command-and-conquer style platforms. We could fix bugs ourselves, instead of waiting for years for vendors to _maybe_ fix the bugs we diligently reported.

We could distribute our own libraries and packages in minutes, with licenses of our own choice. There was no corporate gatekeeper standing in the way. (But what of security, you ask? Look at Lenovo and Superfish ... that was a MITM attack _produced_ by the supposed gatekeepers).

Now it seems things have come full circle, and a younger generation of developers is discovering, once again, that writing software for closed, proprietary systems is a mug's game.

Only now, those platforms seem even _more_ strongly entrenched, courtesy the mobile duopoly and web monopoly.

</comment><comment><USER92> I wonder if it would be possible to build a casa against Google and start a legal litigation on this matters.

</comment><comment><USER93> This is same the guy who owns the leftpad package on npm :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Digital needs a human touch. Google never understood this, and I would never trust them with anything important. Too many nightmares with their robots. Generally, I don't care, dumped Google and Chrome, but the Nest thermostat hurt.

</comment><comment><USER94> The worst part of the so called modern Google experience for me is that somehow mediocrity seems to be accepted as good enough. Quality human work has been replaced by software that is far from perfect. The worst part: others try to emulate that, "because Google is doing that." But Google is a Behemoth that can afford not caring. Moreover, since they know they can't be search leaders forever, they really can't afford not diversifying and not experimenting with all possible services, trying to see which one sticks and which could be monetized. So I expect it's going to be much worse in the future.

</comment><comment><USER95> > Imagine having the same conversation, and starting it over and over from > scratch every a few weeks

Seems like after doing this 2 or 3 times, I'd be making plans for a pivot or change to my business model.

</comment><comment><USER96> It makes me wonder when behaviors like this becomes an anti-trust issue.

</comment><comment><USER97> I like that the author called automated answer system of Google Chrome extensions what it is. And it is bullying indeed. It is yet another raport about misbehaviour of this company torwards developers. Why in earth we should accept corporation bullying developers when we set up policies in communities for everyone to feel safe? There is no place for double standards. I hope the author will support the free internet by providing services outside the closed ecosystem of Google

</comment><comment><USER55> This isn't a Google issue. This is a platforms-that-can-enable-censorship issue.

Google is just an instance of the class. All of the instances of the class are subject to this problem. Fixing Google's policies will not eliminate this danger.

Censorship platforms that do not permit the user an escape hatch (iOS App Store, I'm looking at you) are ultimately able to decide what we see, what we read, what we are allowed to think. They can disappear entire bodies of work without even a notification.

Do not use censorship platforms.

</comment><comment><USER98> This seems like a cool service. There are few bookmark managers implementing full text search. Move to safari or firefox and notify the users ?

</comment><comment><USER99> I had the same things 3 years ago. The stupidest user experience I have seen is the process of publishing the google chrome extension.

</comment><comment><USER52> Keeps me wondering, can we still install extensions outside their store? Or did they plug the last escape hatch and fucked it all up?

<comment><USER53> Chrome can load unpacked extensions by enabling Developer mode in about://extensions. Google will definitely get up in your business if you try to distribute an extension on your website this way though.

<comment><USER100> Can you go more into what they do if you try to bypass their distribution mechanism? Is there any existing posts sharing experience? I'm curious as this has always been my backup plan if Google takes this action against my extensions.

<comment><USER101> It's fine on MacOS (albeit a bit clunky), and sideloaded upgrades end up creating two copies of the extension so you'll have to ship your own autoupdater. On Windows, it's a no-go as Chrome will display a scary warning every time you start the browser: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23055651/disable- develop...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23055651/disable-developer- mode-extensions-pop-up-in-chrome)

<comment><USER100> Yikes. I use macos but definitely ship up windows. Appreciate you sharing this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> There is a trend here, Safari 12 killed off extensions. Now Chrome is killing off extensions. And possibly Firefox too?

<comment><USER103> Unlike Safari and Chrome, Firefox doesn't have a financial incentive to prevent ad-blockers. In fact, they did extra work to their Firefox Preview (mobile) app to integrate an ad blocking plugin as early as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> I guess the Product Manager(s) from Chrome extensions at this should reply with clarity of how they are dealing with this.

</comment><comment><USER105> It wouldn't be the first time developers where "trolled" with take down notices. The same thing just happened to pushbullet. Fortunately they were given notice & resolved it & will stay on the store. At least for the time being anyway. We'll see if it happens again. Is this a really common problem?

</comment><comment><USER106> I replied to the latest version update rejection email (referring to policies) from the Chrome Web Store. They actually replied and my latest extension revision went through. Point is, you can actually reply... there is a channel (form) in the Web Store as well, but of course you can only hope to get a reply.

</comment><comment><USER107> Now with MS Edge, wouldn't it be an option just to move to its store and flip Google off? Just a thought.

</comment><comment><USER108> Developers evangelized Android and Chrome in their early days - created the monsters. People making Chrome only sites are feeding the monster.

Instead of Kozmos shutting down, the best revenge would making a firefox extension and getting their users to switch.

<comment><USER109> Agreed, why are they shutting down instead of doing that?

<comment><USER110> I generally try to avoid bitching about Firefox design decisions in Chrome threads, but possibly because of [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1409675](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1409675) \- the original WebExtensions breaking change removed the ability for newtab- style extensions to do a lot of things their XPI counterparts could, in particular focusing on the address bar after opening a new tab. That bug went WONTFIX with no suggestions for an alternative interface, basically telling extension devs to come up with their own proposal for how to implement it if they want that bit of the API back. I'm not familiar enough with the extension in question to say whether any of those specific issues would have affected it (and from the article it sounds like time was a bigger pressure) but developing newtab-style extensions for Firefox is definitely harder than it should be.

While I generally agree with the reasons behind moving away from XPI extensions, it's been really disappointing to see Firefox not be as focused as I'd hoped they'd be on restoring lost extension functionality. That's especially important in the context of Google fuckery like the OP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> If google takes down an extension but it has loyal followers, they can still side load the extension, right?

</comment><comment><USER112> roadbeats, why not port to Firefox? That browser/company respect your privacy, which seems to matter a lot to you. I don't have any personal experience, though I haven't read any(maybe one, many years ago?) horrible situations like yours at Moz://a

</comment><comment><USER113> If anybody at Google is wondering why they are about to face antitrust action... Here you go.

</comment><comment><USER114> Google excels at closing down projects. With all the recent stories I've been reading about problems with the extensions team, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Chrome is losing extensions. No extensions - no ad blockers - <USER2> money for Google.

</comment><comment><USER115> Maybe someday everyone will realize that google isn't a company that provides services to users, it's a data theft company. They don't really care about bugs or frustrations because they aren't in the business of providing things to you. You are not their customer.

The vast majority of people have forgotten that they aren't an email, webapp, cloud storage, or online translation provider. They are an advertising company. They use their products to steal your information. They aren't meant to help the user, because the user is not their customer. I'm sure you will get a real human employee if you are interested in buying ads from them.

Contrary to popular belief there are many companies that provide software besides google. Use them if you want a provider that might care about your problems. "It's not exactly the same as google ____" is not a valid excuse for not giving it an honest try.

<comment><USER116> > they aren't an email, webapp, cloud storage, or online translation provider.

But they are: all of these are paid services Google offers. Presumably if you pay you get a different level/kind of support?

<comment><USER117> The last numbers I saw (2016-ish) put Advertising at 86% of Google's revenue (Or perhaps Alphabet's revenue? I'll admit that all that stuck in my head was this 86.)

If those numbers are still anywhere near close, Google is an advertising company with some interesting side hustles. Just because Harley Davidson sell t-shirts, doesn't mean you'd describe them as anything other than a motorcycle company.

<comment><USER118> A hilariously apt comparison - after looking up Harley's breakdown, it _looks_ like merch was ~10.5% of the revenue brought in by motorcycles (not parts/maintenance) in 2015.

Granted, I'm not well-versed in looking at corporate financials, but the basic breakdown shown here [1] isn't terribly complex

[1] [https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/harley-davidson- rep...](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/harley-davidson-reports- fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2015-results-300211052.html)

<comment><USER117> I didn't realise it was actually that much - it's just the only HD product that anyone I personally know has ever bought, which was why it came to mind.

You did inspire me to go look up actual numbers for google though. Looking at FY Q4 - [https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2019Q4_alphabet_earnings...](https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2019Q4_alphabet_earnings_release.pdf)

If I'm reading the first table correctly, the number for "google advertising" is the sum of all the lines above it, so that's the number I'll take. If we compare that against the bottom line, we get 82.3% for Q4, or 83.2% for FY19.

So either it's improving (from the viewpoint of someone with a distaste of the ad industry, at least), or I mis-remembered 2016's 86% - either way I can update or correct my claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER119> Check out privacy friendly alternatives to Google products on [https://nomoregoogle.com/](https://nomoregoogle.com/)

</comment><comment><USER120> Honestly, I'd be willing to pay $50 a year or something if that means that the bots are less strict when reviewing my app (sort of like what Apple does)

</comment><comment><USER121> One important thing that's missing from the author's story is the _why_. What is it that's triggering the robotic take-down notices?

<comment><USER122> This is of course an interesting point that would satisfy curiosity.

But if we are to accept the author's central claim that it was reviewed and accepted by humans many times in these two years, the why isn't really important. IMO it would just make the story more interesting, not critically different.

Now if you have reason to think that central claim is bullshit that's another question.

PS: also in this types of automated triggers, getting to know what triggered the warnings is in itself a pretty hard task. I think a number of extensions just get removed without ever knowing exactly why it happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER123> Especially since it seems that this extension is for paid users, you can tell them to use Firefox instead (or use Chromium and sideload the extension).

</comment><comment><USER124> Google should really look into this. Improve your developer support experience, that's the right way to treat your ecosystem contributors.

</comment><comment><USER125> Like with appstores, Big Co are taking too much power over our free will.

Let's hope that antitrust agencies will finally investigate them on this subject!

</comment><comment><USER126> Don't relies on somebody else's distribution platform as you sole way to distribute your software. They totally deserve it.

</comment><comment><USER83> I think Google is shutting down chrome extensions

</comment><comment><USER127> I wonder if increasing the store publish fee from $5 to something closer to $50 would enable better customer support.

</comment><comment><USER107> Well, now with MS Edge, wouldn't it be an option to move to its store and flip Google off? Just a thought.

</comment><comment><USER128> Another sad story of how a person's passion is quashed by big-corp monopoly.

When you're on the receiving end, the actions of Google are indistinguishable from those of traditional bureaucracies except that instead of training people to follow scripts, they have bots that take care of things automatically.

Unfortunately for us humans, Google's model of automating the disregard seems sustainable and profitable.

</comment><comment><USER129> I switched to Firefox because of Google's draconian extension policy and don't regret it

</comment><comment><USER105> You could always switch to firefox. Hopefully they don't have stupid algorithms like that.

</comment><comment><USER130> Firefox isn't an option?

</comment><comment><USER72> Is Firefox any better in this respect? I am seriously considering switching.

<comment><USER131> If it bothers you enough "to switch", that implies you've not been writing extensions using universal web extension code, in which case.... what? Why not? The only massive difference is the namespace ("broswer" vs. "chrome"), which is trivially shimmed, and promises vs. callbacks, which is also easily made universal.

But having said that, if you're considering switching you probably also want to consider telling your paid customers how to install your extension themselves, rather than sending them over to Google's extension "store".

</comment></comment><comment><USER132> Kozmos, can someone suggest an alternative / replacement?

</comment><comment><USER133> Google never invest/pay attention enough on support.

</comment><comment><USER134> It's really stop me to make a extension business.

</comment><comment><USER135> Hi there Google employees that occasionally come here to comment!

THIS IS WHAT YOUR COMPANY DOES.

This among MANY other reasons is why people are pissed off with you.

When are you going to fix your toxic corporate culture?

</comment><comment><USER136> I hope Google will go bankrupt

</comment><comment><USER137> I have a theory about Google: They're using AI to handle moderation (among other tasks) and it's sort of effective but fails in a lot of frustrating cases, but they cannot admit that the lack of explainability is a serious flaw in their model or that they'd actually need to have humans in the loop to filter out the garbage experiences. Instead, they use humans but treat them almost like bots (probably easier to build more training datasets that way) and put up a hermetically sealed firewall between these moderators and the public.

Google briefly disabled my Google account last year, and it spooked me. I had created a "brand account" to use with YouTube, and for some reason the new account was flagged for suspension within the first day. I was annoyed, but it didn't bother me too much, and I submitted my appeal (aside: I always feel wonderful having no clue what I'm appealing - I'm pretty sure even the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany would have given me the dignity of knowing what I'd been convicted of before the trial + execution/Gulag). Two days later, I woke up to two emails from Google: the first indicating that my main Google account - <USER3> one where I have my email, several domain names and YouTube TV - had been suspended; the second indicating that the team reviewed my appeal and had found I hadn't violated any policies and my account had been reinstated, but that I'd need to login soon. I logged in posthaste and found that my brand account was still disabled, but at least I could read and backup my email. (At the time I also happened to be in salary negotiations with my then-client and now employer. Really wonderful timing.)

I tried to submit another appeal on the brand account suspension, explaining that I'd received a reinstatement email referencing the original ticket number, and that all their team had done was erroneously disable and reenable my main account. This time, I got a response saying that I already had an appeal pending so I'd need to wait for it to be resolved. If I really cared that much, I could have tried again to explain again that actually it was their mistake, yada yada, but it wasn't worth it. I didn't want my account to be suspended again with very little recourse other than trying to use my network to get something done internally. Like with a corrupt cop, the prudent strategy was to just walk away and avoid conversation.

I've since stopped using Chrome, and I find that I prefer DuckDuckGo to Google (DDG feels like Google Search used to before $GOOG started blindly trusting deep learning to solve everything). I have hardened my resolve against ever touching an Android device, and I use an adblocker zealously. I haven't fully moved my mail or DNS stuff away, but I am much more cautious. I didn't realize in 2004 when I signed up for Gmail that I'd be entrusting my life's records to an organization that makes the DMV look like an expert at efficiency and customer support.

I'd hope that OP and the various other developers here could maybe band together and maybe consult a lawyer. I have a feeling that given the legal realities of discrimination law and the like, Google's policies and enforcement procedures are bound to be in violation, especially considering the law in its home state. Google's behavior is not merely evil in these cases, but evil and incompetent.

</comment><comment><USER138> Next time on HN:

Postmortem and lesson learned: Don't make yourself dependent on BIG_COMPANY when building a product

<comment><USER53> This comment is trite. No Android app, no iPhone app, no Google search listing, no Amazon product page, no Stream/Epic store listing, no browser extensions, no cloud servers. Can you rely on an internet provider or should you lay your own fiber? What technology product are you going to make that relies on nothing? HN deserves better comments imo.

<comment><USER139> Do not relay on one solution, diversify. Have a backup plan. Assume that whatever it is you rely on has possibility to dissappear anytime for any reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER140> One thing I've noticed is that there are a lot of automated decision making going on. In [1], the ICO offers guidance around what the GDPR says in regards to this subject.

What I don't understand is why the GDPR doesn't enforce the following:

1: Clear and concise information about the action being taken, and clear identification this was done using automation and did not involve any human oversight.

2: A process the user can invoke to request human intervention, and a confirmation email that a human will review the decision that was made within 30 days

3: Public statistics and transparency - any decision that was made that did not involve a human must be published, with stats on % of decisions made, number of cases flagged to human reviewers, and the success/failure rates (for example, number of cases resulting in an overturned AI decision by a human).

This could also be beneficial in other sectors too, like automated credit decisions and insurance policies, to publish statistics and data to afford transparency and identify possible biases. It should also be a requirement in law to preserve any code or algorithms should they need to be audited, including an AI system to be preserved "in time", so that the 2017 version can be audited in 2020 if an investigation is launched for example.

Right now, it's a complete free for all, too many edge cases and ways to game the system if you can figure its loopholes, and no requirement in law to provide a fair basis for users to appeal to a human without causing a PR shitstorm.

This early adoption of AI is quite bad, and I suspect we'll see such developments in the long term future as it matures.

[1]: [https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data- protectio...](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data- protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/automated- decision-making-and-profiling/what-does-the-gdpr-say-about-automated-decision- making-and-profiling/)

<comment><USER141> Literally the first sentence of the GDPR:

This Regulation lays down rules relating to the protection of _natural persons_ with regard to the processing of personal data and rules relating to the free movement of personal data.

No snark, this situation sucks, but after dealing with GDPR for a while it's not well understood in tech societies

<comment><USER140> I think what's needed is case studies or case law. A ruling in a court that becomes a "model" as to which the GDPR is applied.

People look at historic court cases which defines future societal behavior (like acceptance of Gay marriage in some places).

It'll take time but get there eventually, and then we'll see changes based on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER142> STOP BUILDING FOR CHROME. THEY WILL DELETE YOU. THEY WILL INVALIDATE YOU. OR THEY WILL COPY YOU.

<comment><USER142> Go ahead and downvote... same goes for Amazon (hello antirust), Facebook, and any other company. They are not your friend... they are your adversary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER143> Everyone should realize by now there are no bots at Google. There are only Google engineers and outsourced workers behind every single "bot", figuratively and literally.

Every nightmare story about accounts being disabled by a bot, or Adsense payouts being canceled, or apps taken out of the App Store, or extensions being shutdown, all done by Google engineers or outsourced workers.

These Google people are doing it because they can and because they are jealous of others' success. They are also doing it because Google has lost their way in the last few years and they are bored, among other reasons.

They also continually screw with web site search results to harm certain sites, individuals, and companies for much the same reasons as mentioned above.

Trust me when I tell you that there are no bots behind these final decisions. It's being done by Google engineers and their outsourced workers.</comment>


Building desktop app with Rust and Elm, no Electron needed - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/huytd/kanban-app <comment><USER2> > But Electron did the same thing?

> Yeh, but sometimes, all you need is just a webview to display your web > application on a desktop. You don't need file system access or automatic > update, blah blah, it would be a huge waste to ship your app with >100MB of > Chromium and V8 in it.

> In fact, this application only uses 0-3% CPU and the bundle size is >800KB > on macOS.

~800Kb is really nice leap from 100M !

</comment><comment><USER3> Inspired by this I did a little proof of concept in Go: [https://github.com/imdario/gonban](https://github.com/imdario/gonban)

</comment><comment><USER4> Getting multiple errors on both repos. OP fork of webview is getting a linker error in my windows 10 and the elm project doesn't build past elm-make, the webpack fails later...

<comment><USER5> [https://github.com/huytd/kanban- app/issues/1](https://github.com/huytd/kanban-app/issues/1)</comment></comment>


MongoDB 2.6 Released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mongodb.org/post/82092813806/mongodb-2-6-our-biggest-release-ever

<comment><USER2> A lot of hype... And we still have db level locking. If document level is too difficult, at LEAST do collection level (not that it is too much better, but least it some real improvement).

<comment><USER3> I was reading somewhere that Mongo can't do document level/record level locking because of mmap'ed files. The whole database is memory mapped. And mmap doesn't understand underlined data structure, it views the whole file as a large single blob.

Ditching mmap will not be that easy, cause most of the speed and simplicity of Mongo comes from using mmap.

<comment><USER4> mmap does complicate things. A traditional database often works using write ahead logs. The log holds changes made to the database over time - so when you want to write a change to your DB, you put 'I'm changing value x.y to 50' in your WAL. Sometime later the actual data pages holding the modified x data structure can be written out to disk. If you have a crash before the data pages get written out, you can 'replay' your WAL file to redo all the lost changes.

Unfortunately, a central requirement of a write ahead log is that the data pages must not get written before the WAL. If that were to occur, and there were a crash, the system wouldn't know that it had to undo the changes to the data pages, leaving you with corrupt data. mmap generally doesn't provide the ability to pin your dirty pages in memory - they're subject to getting flushed any time the system is under memory pressure - so it makes logging a lot more complicated to get right.

<comment><USER5> Just to note, the MongoDB journal is basically a write ahead log and has been around since 1.8. It's not simple, you are correct, and involved remapping portions of memory privately, and leads to some inflated numbers on the virtual memory reporting side. There's a great write up here:

[http://blog.mongodb.org/post/33700094220/how-mongodbs- journa...](http://blog.mongodb.org/post/33700094220/how-mongodbs-journaling- works)

<comment><USER4> That's interesting, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And it _still_ relies entirely on the OS's scheduling algorithms for caching and IO. mmap is nice but it has no idea you're running a database.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here are the release notes. [http://docs.mongodb.org/master/release- notes/2.6/](http://docs.mongodb.org/master/release-notes/2.6/)

</comment><comment><USER8> _Finally, MongoDB 2.6 lays the foundation for massive improvements to concurrency in MongoDB 2.8, including document-level locking._

This is exciting even if I don't expect it to happen soon.

<comment><USER9> TokuMX, which I work on, has document level locking and compression right now.

<comment><USER10> trying amisaserver found it somewhere in the comments below. claims to have MVCC.

<comment><USER10> sweet then, will give tokumx a shot as well. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> With this release aggregation framework got super powerful. Now it returns a cursor. Now we can get the aggregation results and iterate over them. No more 16mb result limitation as well...

<comment><USER12> Can you elaborate for people who don't understand the feature? Is the aggregation result large because of grouping?

<comment><USER11> Well, aggregation in MongoDB allows you to write sql like queries, and before 2.6 if aggregated result was > 16mb it was throwing an error, but now it gives you a cursor. Now you can fetch the results and send to another collection. For an example aggregation query in mongo have a look here: [http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/aggregation-zip- code...](http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/aggregation-zip-code-data- set/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using Elasticsearch as a primary database for my new project, which has basically been a good NoSQL db that happens to have great search. However, peripheral tools(performance testing, hosting) have been a bit rough.

How do the two databases compare now. Is search improving in Mongo or is that something they are not really worrying about at the moment.

<comment><USER10> if you are looking for a nosql dbms as a service which consumes json and supports SQL and search, you could try amisaserver

<comment><USER14> have you seen the pricing? it's insane

<comment><USER15> The price is unbelievably fair. Try deploying mysql in the cloud and while you are at it, you get Redis as well for cache and then you hit the wall you need search in your application, so you deploy elastic search as a service as well. Do the math and compare to ours.

Our pricing starts as low as $15 per month

The cheapest instance of amazon cloudsearch is around $79 monthly, You then have to deploy a transactional DBMS and then most likely S3 for storage as well.

<comment><USER14> It's 700/month (otherwise your product isn't needed because no-sharding? postgresql can do most of the stuff)

the hosted version is upto 8gb ram, don't you think that's low ?

sqlserver + oracle are also insane

<comment><USER15> $700 annually. Please read well before you misrepresent us.

By the way Partitioning by Hash and Range as we have stated means "Sharding"

<comment><USER14> the 700$month was mistyped

what i meant is that the correct price is 700 and not 350 since the 350 pricing doesn't include sharding/clustering

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is good write-up about what's new with actual numbers. [http://devops.com/news/mongodb-2-6-significant-release- mongo...](http://devops.com/news/mongodb-2-6-significant-release-mongo-yet/) Quote: "MongoDB 2.6 provides more efficient use of network resources; oplog processing is 75% faster; classes of scan, sort, $in and $all performance are significantly improved; and bulk operators for writes improve updates by as much as 5x."

</comment><comment><USER17> Awesome news. I am excited for the aggregation cursor. As much as I love some of the alternatives that are almost ready I still turn to mongo for a vast majority of my deployments. Hopefully it will keep getting better and pushing others to do the same.

</comment><comment><USER18> Can someone with more MongoDB experience give me your thoughts on the upgrade difficulty here? Worth doing soon, or waiting for a point release? Does this require a data rebuild/update process (coming from 2.4)?

<comment><USER19> IMO unless you desperately need one of the new features I would hold off a few weeks. With a release this big I'd expect there will be some bugs and wouldn't be surprised to see 2.6.1 shortly.

<comment><USER20> This is always best practice for anything important unless you find your life is dull and bereft of emergency.

<comment><USER21> In the case of Mongo, it's the opposite - the upgrades are needed badly enough that it's worth the risk of a major number release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So i've been trying to find an the ideal case for mongodb, because I have to teach a nosql database to some people I am mentoring.

I'm leaning heavily towards couchdb though.

[http://daemon.co.za/2014/04/when-is-mongodb-the-right- tool](http://daemon.co.za/2014/04/when-is-mongodb-the-right-tool)

<comment><USER23> Be sure to check out RethinkDB as well, which is pretty much mongo with a MUCH nicer query interface and saner locking.

[http://rethinkdb.com/](http://rethinkdb.com/) [http://rethinkdb.com/docs/comparison- tables/](http://rethinkdb.com/docs/comparison-tables/)

<comment><USER24> I can also recommend checking out rethinkdb. It feels like MongoDB but without many of the downsides.

Not saying MongoDB is bad (I've used Mongodb and like it), but much of their API-design is quirky/bad, locking is an issue and mmap feels weird too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some notes on using the shell, and some unforeseen performance changes from the beta: [http://comerford.cc/wordpress/2014/03/28/mongodb-2-6-shell-p...](http://comerford.cc/wordpress/2014/03/28/mongodb-2-6-shell- performance/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Cursor for aggregate, proper explain for aggregate, index intersection, $redact and other cool operators, Multi* in Geospatial, faster execution and, foundation for document-level locking which should be introduced in MongoDB 2.8. I must say I'm happy with this release.

</comment><comment><USER25> Playing with Meteor and mongo recently and have found mongo seems a little bit strange from a transitional SQL point of view, like do I need to embed or reference? Can anyone recommend a good book or source?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/model-embedded- one-t...](http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/model-embedded-one-to-many- relationships-between-documents/)

[http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/data-model- design/](http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/data-model-design/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So does this mean document level locking has been implemented or just the foundation for its future implementation has been laid?

I can't hold my breath much longer! :-)

Edit: docs don't make any mention of it but then again they probably haven't updated them yet (fingers crossed!) [http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/faq/concurrency/#what-type- of...](http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/faq/concurrency/#what-type-of-locking- does-mongodb-use)

<comment><USER27> It means the foundation has been laid. 2.6 included a lot of refactoring and rewriting of some core subsystems, with the apparent goal of eliminating technical debt so they can make more impactful changes in 2.8.

Don't asphyxiate, tokumx has document-level locking right now. [http://github.com/Tokutek/mongo](http://github.com/Tokutek/mongo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I am a big fan of their focus on manageability for sharded databases. I am less of a fan of their db internals that might require you to use many more shards than a more performant engine. More details at [http://smalldatum.blogspot.com](http://smalldatum.blogspot.com)

</comment><comment><USER29> The blog post was rather vague about 2.6's "better performance". Are there any concrete numbers?

</comment><comment><USER30> The main reason I use MongoDB on Node is the maturity of the Mongoose ORM - I've used Node-ORM 2, BookshelfJS, and SequelizeJS and none of them felt as mature as Mongoose.

<comment><USER31> Mongoose is definitely a pleasure to work with, regardless of MongoDB faults. Well-designed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> How is it possible to have aggregation cursors without crunching the complete data set in advance (aka map/reduce) and still have consistent and correct results?

</comment><comment><USER33> Will MongoDB still segfault under certain circumstances?

<comment><USER34> Everything will segfault under certain circumstances.

<comment><USER35> The only reasonable assumption is circumstances that do not involve hardware failure, the binary being compiled incorrectly, the source code being modified or replaced by someone downstream, the libraries it is using being corrupt or having been replaced by ABI-incompatible variants... none of these are reasonable circumstances; one would then further assume that the person posting has run into reasonable circumstances where MongoDB often crashes, which is not a stretch given the number of bugs that are filed against it that talk about this kind of issue.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=site:jira.mongodb.org+mongod...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site:jira.mongodb.org+mongodb+segfault)

<comment><USER33> Exactly; well said. It's been about a year but basically I had a replica set where sometimes one replica or the other would segfault and I'd have to manually delete its data files and re-replicate, after which it was fine. Happened about every few months. It was clearly based on application behavior and not an inherent system problem such as those you listed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wonder, what does this mean for TokuMX

<comment><USER26> Am glad someone has brought up TokuMX. Tell me, have you used it in production yet?

I wonder why 10gen hasn't made any official comment on the work the folks at Tokutek are doing to enhance Mongodb's features.

<comment><USER19> _> I wonder why 10gen hasn't made any official comment on the work the folks at Tokutek are doing to enhance Mongodb's features._

Why would they comment? What would they say? Toku is basically trying to steal MongoDB's customers, they even use the same basic pricing model.

<comment> nevi-me For me the really irritating thing is the observation that when I want to enjoy flame wars about Mongo, I seem to see a lot of their 'try TokuMX' everywhere. Last time I checked they are on the 2.2 codebase, unless that recently changed. Mongo 2.4 was a significant upgrade, and assuming I'm correct above, I feel like the Tokutek team disregard that. I get that it's good marketing to suggest an alternative, but going along criticising that which you've built upon doesn't go well with me.

<comment><USER27> Last time you checked was a while ago, it's 2.4 compatible now (except geo and full-text) and has been since TokuMX 1.3.

We generally don't criticize indiscriminately. MongoDB has a lot of good sides and we embrace and extend those, and where it has faults we try to work around or replace them. Our core strength is fast, reliable, compressed storage and MVCC semantics, so obviously we talk about that a lot, but we also understand and acknowledge that a large amount of TokuMX's success, to the degree it has some, is due to the excellent parts of MongoDB.

As an example, I personally am really excited about what MongoDB has done with aggregations in 2.6 (and what seems to be coming down the pipe soon), and I can't wait to merge it in to TokuMX. We all get stronger together.

<comment><USER26> This is a well put together reply, very politically correct. Good to know you're on TokuMX dev team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Mongo haven't updated their feeds for Ubuntu. I wonder how long they will take to do so?

<comment><USER37> They have now. However 2.6 uses different package names, configuration file name, log file etc. It is generally mongod instead of the earlier mongodb (eg before it was /etc/mongodb.conf and is now /etc/mongod.conf).

This means no automatic upgrades to 2.6, and sysadmin action to correct config file name etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> mongodb is the best database in the whole wide world at the moment. I encourage everyone to jump in mongodb for agile web scale development with full big data capability.

<comment><USER39> Well, I think I must disagree with you in here.

I'm sure that it is a viable choice for some use cases, it's just that I didn't found a use case for it yet.

Being able to choose from PostgreSQL, Redis, Cassandra, heck, even ElasticSearch made me always choose one of those over MongoDB, at least for the problems which I had been trying to solve.

<comment><USER15> By the way if you are looking for all the above functionality provided by all the DBMS you mentioned in a single DBMS instance, you can check out amisaserver.com. Polygot persistence is just another fad.

<comment><USER26> Doesn't appear to have a community edition for local/private installation...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I have never understood how the definition of "Document Database" is different from "File System".

<comment><USER41> Really? Have you ever tried to search for specific content in structured documents on a filesystem?

<comment><USER42> I have, and found what I was looking for. What am I doing wrong?

<comment><USER41> How much data were you grepping for? How much time did it take? How did you transmit those results over the network?

Or does your data fit in one csv file?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Coop – Connect people through activities - <AUTHOR> https://www.thecoopapp.com/ <comment><USER2> I don't have a Facebook profile, but I hope this thing works. This is something the world needs.

However, even if I had a Facebook profile I would have zero hope of finding people near my area, at least in these early stages of the app, and hardly would bother to look for them.

This is the cruelty of the network effect. I hope you manage to overcome it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely agree with the cruelty of the network effect. We're contacting conferences and other events to use Coop and hope to gain some traction.

I'm glad you agree that the world needs something like Coop, particularly with how we are getting distracted by technology rather than human interaction.</comment></comment>


Princeton Concludes Kind of Government America Has, and It's Not a Democracy - <AUTHOR> http://mic.com/articles/87719/princeton-concludes-what-kind-of-government-america-really-has-and-it-s-not-a-democracy

<comment><USER2> Doesn't having an electoral college, by definition, make the US not a democracy?</comment>